Katherine Day Part 10

The flowers at Hawthornes

Part Ten

The Homesteader's Life - Canadian Artist, Katherine Day at Hawthornes

By Ted and Suzanne Currie

     "August 30th, 1941 - Kate (unidentified) says that watercress is not ripe and fit to eat until it raises its leaves above the water. You may see the clear washed green leaves under the flowing water in a great sheet, looking pure and quite pleasantly edible. But the watercress has no flavour until it puts its green leaves up into the air, up from the depths of the flowing water. Like all things which are under water, what grows there as vegetation tastes like the host water and has, like the watercress, not yet developed its own pungent characteristic, especially its flavour which comes in time. Upon reaching for the watercress I pushed one foot into the oozy muck. It's a good thing I didn't have my good shoes on for that misadventure."
     Taken from the pages of Katherine Day's journal, kept through the summer of 1941, while living at her Oro-Medonte property, known as "Hawthornes," she goes on to write about the problems with hens.
     "A brooder hen? Dip her rear end into cold water, and that will stop her broodiness. If that doesn't work, try it tomorrow again and just keep up with a daily dip until she stops. A better solution than shutting her up somewhere. Two are broody and I have dipped them for three days running. This last time each remembered what was about to happen, and I tucked her under my arm and she gripped my hand with her claws, while yelling and flapping her wings. Despite this out roar, she was again lowered into the cold water again, and dipped up and down numerous times, and maybe today, neither one will want to settle long on that wet feather bed.
     "Making a 'marran bed,' I asked my friend? Only a pile of turf and manure ripening for compost. A wonderful 'marran' bed it would be! They like a deep bed. Their roots go down and down. Maybe I could grow acorn squash on a bed like that. Worth trying. After a severe cutting back of the perennials at the end of June, when they had finished blooming, the following has happened. Delphinium, Sweet William, Oriental Poppy. Blooming again - Delphinium, Nepeta, Marigolds, commencing to bloom; Zinnias, and Asters."
     She adds to her journal, dated August 31, 1941, that while "Crossing a clover field, at the border, of which we had collected a great bunch of wild grapes, there was suddenly, a 'whooshing' sound, passing us, humming like the wind; with ears back, tail straight, and a beautiful stream-lined red fox with a muff of white around his neck, and a white tip on the end of his tail. He fled past us like a boat in the water, leaving barely a ripple which closed in after him. It headed straight for the cover of the fence with a speed and some tactics of its body, so intense, that one could have only believed any creature at all, had just startled us, running past our human intrusion on its sanctuary. It may have presumed its life was in danger, had we been hunters. Human beings unsettle the calm of the land in this way. As speedy as the wind, the fox was quickly out of sight but I did enjoy those few seconds of observation, as it sped by us in the field.
     "The barred rock pullets were hatched on June 22nd, and it is now August 31st. They are just ten weeks old to the dot. Their foster mother is a 'Silkie', to whom they were given, as they sat on the nest. She must have been surprised to see first, the black chicken, second, sixteen (with added eggs), out of eight original eggs, and third, a hatchling when she had sat only a week. But she did not turn a feather in objection, and remained contently on the nest for another twenty-four hours; for she knew that chicks must be kept covered for the first day of their lives, and she had the idea that she had hatched them herself. As it was, the chicks were done and one day's meals, for they were a day old when they were given to this feathered foster mother. She cared for all sixteen with all her might, and motherly instincts, for ten weeks and only now has she dislodged them to fend for themselves. She has been driving them away slowly, but deliberately when they have approached her, and today she has been angrily pursuing any chicks that come near her, pecking them and making them cry out with pain. That will teach them not to tag after her, when old enough to fend for themselves. She is now trying to get into the hen yard with the older hens again, and maybe she will even lay and egg."
     Katherine Day reports in her journal about the annoyance of "clucking hens".
     "I have been advised, by those who know of such things, to also dip the rear end of a clucking hen in cold water, to as they say, bring her back to her senses. And to dip her again the next day if that is not sufficient. After three dips one of the two hens has been cured of her constant clucking, but for sheer obstinance, I have had no such luck. Night after night I dipped her - shrieking and yelling out, while flapping her winds to fight my attempts to dip her in the water - and she must have an unforgiving wet pile of feathers to sit on in her nest. But sit in it she does to spite me and my efforts. She is so small that she can creep back into the henyard through any crack or cranny, and when I must go into the barn, she is back in her nest, probably dry by this point. Short of drowning the poor creature altogether, I don't know what else to do, other than endure the constant clucking.
     "March 11th, 1942 - My farmer neighbour says that it is still safe to cross the ice until the color darkens. There is a family of squirrels living in the rock house. There they dwell at ease, and eat all my wonderful apples. They come out and go upward, swinging branch to branch, with the birds flittering about, filling their cheeks before sauntering home with the spoils of the raid. If I come to the backyard and interrupt them, there is a volley of flying squirrels in my direction, making-off speedily for the cover of their home sanctuary. Up and down they jump through the overhead tree limbs, crossing lines, coming and going with other squirrels they have joined from other areas of the property, and then dive from anywhere, straight down the hole in their habitat from all pursuers. And one little brave fellow stops and glares back at me, dancing on his hind legs, and then making short dashes around me excited to be free and, yes, well fed. He pops back up before he pops down into the hole, satisfied I am not his enemy after all. March 30th - On a laying cafeteria mesh, the ten large hens laid nine eggs yesterday. Of course, with their recent mating, the Silkies will be off for awhile.
     "April 5, 1942 - A Silkie laid an egg today. One poor hen Silkie was moping about - so much so, that I put her into the 'cat basket,' and brought her into the warm kitchen. She has not been eating and is getting much too thin for her own good. I have managed to make her nibble a little mash by pushing her beak into a spoon, and I can feel she has some food in her crop; and with the heat of the kitchen she has seemingly cheered up from earlier. But that food bear came dashing into the kitchen to see if there could possibly be another lick of the food on the cat's plate; and in the process, scared the Silkie right out of the basket. She paraded solemnly around the living room, once the dog (Bear) was finally ejected from the room, and it settled eventually under the stove in the kitchen; and I finally just picked her up by the feet and placed her back in the basket. She is number seven and I have an idea she is my two year old, for she seems pretty tame and at the same time, very wary of intruders. This was the Silkie of the woodshed wood-pile who knew her way home to the chick's yard gate so well. She had been mauled badly by the dogs, early in life, but not deeply bitten. So probably, she remembered Bear from an earlier encounter. Fido begged for the water melon he seemingly (but not really) loves to eat with such relish, and I gave him the last bite. He took it with expectations, held it in his mouth for a second, with long pauses, and with some visible disillusionment at how to protect his territory. In his wide gaze upon anyone who might try to take it away from him, he protected the bounty of watermelon. He exited the kitchen and with the watermelon in his mouth, trotted down the path and laid it down on the grass, but not before surveying all around, looked back from it to me, several times, before picking it up again, and travelling further on to the Mulberry bush. He discovered that watermelon wasn't exactly the prize he had been hoping for, and opted instead, to bury the treasure for later consideration."
     According to the resident of Hawthornes, Miss Day, "Reuben distinguished himself tonight. He is the most disregarding cat I have ever seen or owned. He will leap up on anything, - even a leaf of typewriter paper, hanging over the table-top, and is always astounded to see and feel the consequences of his actions. Tonight he decided to leap on a wooden bowl heaped with balls of rug wool, which was balancing itself nicely, while obviously near the edge of one of those old fashioned sewing tables with two drawers, that stand on three legs. The situation was delicate enough without Reuben's unexpected jump and bounce. There was a frightful crash, and the whole blithering table-full flew all over the room from the impact with the floor, preceded of course, by a streak of white lightning that dashed under the stove, and stayed there the rest of the evening. When I went upstairs he followed close at my heals, speechless for once. He crouched on the landing where he could watch downstairs to see that none of those balls of wool was following him. But that was not the only thing he knocked over. On that small table were also two elephants, an ashtray, an East Indian card case, a small copper vase with Hyacinths in water of course, a brass fruit bowl on a stand, with a lemon in it; two canvas boards and a gift item from a friend which is my great treasure. I dashed to see if it had been injured, but of all that hoard, the only thing broken was the lid of the card case. It almost looks as though Reuben was justified in upsetting the table. It was messy and a disgrace to the room in which he dwells.
     "Much later in the evening, Reuben stood at the top of the stairs looking down, and gave a long harangue in his own defense. Reviewing the incident no doubt, in the light of self reflection. It proved rather exciting, once again, to have hens, goats, dogs and cats living so close together around this humble abode. Sambo is the last of the Silkie Roosters and now is six years old. I reared some light Sussex chicks that year and the cockerels are now enormous. Sambo tried to beat them up as usual. He always has ruled the roost as they say. But this year, the Sussex grew bigger and bigger, until finally, in one terrific battle, Sambo came out with all the feathers removed from his back, and a true inferiority complex; and ever-after, does not dare to venture into the hen house, but creeps instead back inside the shelter for the goats as he did before. He hates this but it's now his safe place to rest from adversaries. His importance in the yard has collapsed, like a pricked balloon, and he skims big legged jumps whenever he hears the voice of a Sussex on its approach.
     "At night he creeps up to the goat house door, and someone has to go with him, to keep the two kids from bounding him straight in his face. Then he gets in and a goat bawls at him, and pushes him out again. With his nerves in tatters, he is finally shut up for the night, and no doubt senses the pending distress of the evening, evidenced by his rapid exit in the morning, when he shoots past, beneath your legs and out of the door. The days are spent one leap ahead of his enemies, the Sussex."
     Please join us tomorrow, for Part 11 of the Katherine Day biography.